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Biology Medicine Physics Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Thanks, CWRU, for forcing me to get the paper bag out again

It’s rare that I have much in the way of reluctance to leap into writing about a topic. Any regular reader of this blog should know this to be true, given the topics I regularly take on and how often my writing draws flak my way from various proponents of quackery and pseudoscience, in particular […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Medicine Physics Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

HuffPo now has a science section, and I remain skeptical that it changes anything.

It’s no secret that I’ve been highly critical of The Huffington Post, at least of its approach to science and medicine. In fact, it was a mere three weeks after Arianna Huffington launched her blog back in 2005 that I noticed something very distressing about it, namely that it had recruited someone who would later […]

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Biology Cancer Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The complexity of cancer

About a week ago, there appeared a story in the New York Times about recent discoveries in cancer research written by George Johnson and entitled Cancer’s Secrets Come Into Sharper Focus. Overall, it was a better-than-average article for the lay press about recent discoveries in cancer research that go beyond just the cancer cell and […]

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Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Homeopathy Medicine Quackery Science

If randomized clinical trials don’t show that your woo works, try anthropology!

It’s grant crunch time, as the submission deadline for revised R01s is July 5. However, in a classic example of how electronic filing has actually made things more difficult, the grant has to be done and at the university grant office a week before the deadline if it is to be uploaded in time. So, […]

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Biology Clinical trials Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Dr. Egnor has his own blog now. Hilarity ensues about evolution and medicine.

Remember Michael Egnor? I bet many of you do. If you were reading this blog three or four years ago, Dr. Egnor was a fairly regular target topic of my excretions of not-so-Respectful Insolence. The reason for that was, at the time, I was quite annoyed that a fellow surgeon could so regularly lay down […]